Get to know
NODUSians
NODUS Sustainable Design Research Group undertakes transdisciplinary design research for sustainable futures.
NODUS Leader
Associate Professor, Sustainable Design
İdil Gaziulusoy’s research is situated within the emerging area of design for sustainability transitions. She is interested in the new ways of designing and the agencies enabled, enacted and embodied by design that emerge in transformations/transitions contexts.
Find İdil’s publications here
Associate Professor, Co-Innovating for Circular Solutions
Mikko Jalas is an Associate professor of Co-Innovating for Circular Solutions. His research interests include sustainable consumption, time use and societal rhythms, as well as climate change mitigation and design for sustainability transformations.
Find Mikko’s publications here
Senior Lecturer
tatu.marttila[at]aalto.fi
I'm a design teacher and researcher interested in how design activities can become an effectual part in facilitating sustainability transitions. With a background in industrial and strategic design and in new media, I'm currently working as a senior lecturer on Design for Sustainability at Department of Design in Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture.
Find Tatu's publications here
Postdoctoral researcher
Katie is a postdoctoral researcher working on a European project to make carbon emissions data accessible and actionable for policymakers and communities. Her work bridges climate science and urban policymaking, designing tools that drive informed, inclusive climate action.
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Postdoctoral researcher
Hella Hernberg is an architect and postdoctoral researcher striving for resource wisdom and socio-ecological sustainability in urban and built environments. Her research focuses on the intermediation of complex socio-political processes to advance the care and revitalization of existing spaces and properties as part of urban sustainability transformations.
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Postdoctoral researcher
Gloria Lauterbach is an artistic researcher with a PhD in Arts from Aalto University. Gloria specializes on urban habitation strategies in times of polycrisis in general and the question on how to reconceptualize anthropogenic infrastructures (such as lighting infrastructures) in particular.
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Doctoral researcher
Kata is an architect whose PhD addresses how food system challenges can be addressed by design, and how spatial practitioners can meaningfully contribute to the facilitation of sustainable diets.
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Doctoral researcher
Talvikki’s doctoral research explores how knowledge work is organized in post pandemic Finland. By exploring the hybrid work practices and experiences of Finnish knowledge workers, she uncovers what work designs emerge and will be needed long-term.
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Doctoral researcher
maria.ferreiralitowtschenko[at]aalto.fi
Maria Ferreira's research focuses on design in the public sector, especially in experimental institutional forms like public innovation labs. The aim is to understand the interactions and collaborations between various actors seeking to influence governance, particularly in the Latin American context.
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Doctoral researcher
sonja.nielsen[at]aalto.fi
Sonja’s dissertation critically examines and further develops knowledge co-production methods in environmental governance, empirically focusing on the Transition Arena method in Finland. She is especially interested in understanding how social impacts emerge in these settings and how they connect to environmental policy processes as participatory experiments.
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Doctoral researcher
Tomi Rantanen’s research is focused on provoking gender equality transitions in music. He aims to discover how systemic design and transition arenas can facilitate change towards feminist futures.
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Doctoral researcher
Delphine Rumo's doctoral research focuses on sustainable construction. In her research, she investigates communities of practice that restructure conventional economic spaces towards post-development economies.
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Doctoral researcher
Saga-Sofia Santala's interdisciplinary doctoral research explores the potential of engaging close social communities in creating transitions towards more sustainable mobility practices. Through constructive design research in citizens' everyday lives, it demonstrates ways in which social communities shape (un)sustainable mobility practices and draws implications for socially informed mobility intervention design.
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Doctoral researcher
Tommi Vasko is a researcher, designer, and organizer whose doctoral research examines live action role-playing in the context of the politics of sustainability transitions.
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NODUS
Alumni
Satu Lähteenoja is a postdoctoral researcher. She studies and experiments sustainability transformations and the possibilities of co-design in advancing them. In addition to working at Aalto University, she studies the same topics in the think tank Demos Helsinki.
Find Satu’s publications here
Eeva Houtbeckers’ postdoctoral research project is funded by Nessling Foundation and Kone Foundation. Her research is an ethnography on post-growth economy, work and livelihoods in the global North inspired by ecofeminist thinking. She focuses on forest, land and self-sufficiency debates.
Find Eeva’s publications here.
Michael Lettenmeier is interested in the implications of one-planet lifestyles for households, business and society, and for the transition to an eco-welfare state. He has developed the 8 tonnes resource cap for sustainable lifestyles, the 1.5-degree lifestyles concepts and several footprint calculators for lifestyles.
Find Michael’s publications here.
Emilija Veselova is developing a theoretical and methodological framework for involving nonhuman stakeholders in collaborative and participatory design processes. She has proposed a bioinclusive approach to co-design and, currently, she researches about which nonhuman entities and structural elements are relevant in a project.
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Philip Hector’s doctoral research is at the intersection of participatory design, social movement studies, STS and sustainable consumption. The objective of his project is to better understand how repair and DIY grassroots initiatives create alternative production and consumption infrastructures and who gets to participate in these processes.
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Luisa Mok’s doctoral research integrating transitions theories and strategic design studies explores strategic design for the short-term future in transitions pathways. She focuses on problems inherent in the near future that have to be progressively overcome before they lead to critical situations that hamper systems transitions. Luisa is now teaching in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong.
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Elif Erdoğan Öztekin focuses on the multidimensional learning processes of transitions in her PhD research across four cases of eco-settlements in Europe. Her research relates to design for sustainability transitions, transdisciplinary research, and participatory methods of knowledge production.
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Cindy Kohtala studies peer production: materialist activists exploring peer-to-peer ways to design and produce locally and more sustainably. Her research focuses especially on fab labs and makerspaces, using Science & Technology Studies frameworks.
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Elise Hodson has a PhD in Communication & Culture (York University) and masters degrees in museum studies (University of Toronto) and design history (Bard Graduate Center). Her doctoral work focused on distributed authorship in contemporary design practice and global production. Elise’s research interests include global design history and commodity studies; design economies and the value of design; design and social innovation; and design museums and museology. Prior to coming to Aalto University, Elise was Chair of the School of Design at George Brown College in Toronto, Canada.
You can find Elise’s publications here.